Rock and Roll Stories 2 - How to be a Rock and Roller by Lemmy

 Lets start with a confession. I am not a Motorhead fan. They are just a bit too heavy for my tastes. I love the idea of the band, I love their logo, I love Lemmy, but the actual music simply never floated my boat. I'd probably be more likely to wear a Motorhead T-shirt than buy a record. But for me, Lemmie was Mr Rock and Roll. A wise sage, the John the Baptist of Rock, who has a million times more fans than record sales. I do have a big sweet spot for their music on a jukebox, you cannot hear "The Ace of Spades" on the Jukebox and not smile. Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, there were a bunch of bikers who would sit at the back of the Beehive pub in Edgware and deal various illegal substances. They by and large kept themselves to themselves and only really interacted with the rest of the pub when dodgy deals were being struck. I knew a few of them to nod to. My sister had hung around with the Mendes, the local bike gang of the era, going out with one of the members briefly, until he was locked up for a failed drunken theft from a dirty book stall in Euston. They knew I was in a band and we had a short period, where the band used to play at local bike rallies. I had huge kudos with one or two, as they knew I "knew Lemmy". I'd always make sure I put Ace of Spades on the jukebox when I went in, just to keep up the illusion. 

So, you may ask, how did I actually know Lemmy. Well the truth is that I didn't. I spent one evening in Dingwalls, chatting to him. Not just for five minutes, but for most of the night. What would Lemmy have to say to a snotty nosed teenager from Mill Hill? Well quite a lot actually. I've never imparted this wisdom before and bear in mind that it has aged, as have I, with time, but it is not embellished. Any errors are omission, by alcohol and age, but the substance is largely correct.

So how did I come to be Lemmy's best mate? Well, lets go back to January 1980. This was immediately after events in the previous episode. Pete Conway, my best mate and the person I founded The False Dots with, had not turned up for our first gig, letting the me down in a devastating manner. We'd been mates since we were four years old and had spent two years building the band. Then he simply didn't show up.

We had a good band, but we lacked a proper singer and front man. At the time, it hadn't occurred to me to sing. The choir mistress and my teachers had convinced me that I had no talent at all. I was still mastering the guitar and there was no way I was ready for that challenge. In hindsight ( a wonderful thing), I should have just done it and got on with it, but I had no confidence. I did a few numbers, but they were the wrong songs for me, something it took a long time to understand. I was in a crisis. I'd spent two years with Pete planning how The False Dots would take over the world, but it had all dissolved. To say I was gutted was the understatement of all time. It was worse than most of the romantic break ups I've had. It wasn't a sexual thing, but I loved Pete and thought we'd be in the band together for ever. He simply hadn't turned up. It was the most casual and hurtful snub imaginable.  But we still had a band and I was more determined than ever to make a go of it, if for no other reason than loyalty to Paul, Craig and Dav, who'd stood beside me when Pete let me down.

At the time, I was going to gigs all the time. I'd go with mates or on my own. Mostly, I went to the Moonlight Club, The Marquee and The Music Machine. There was one place though, I particularly liked, for the worst of reasons. It was Dingwalls. At the time, if you arrived before 10pm, drinks were half priced. The plan was to get there at 7.30pm when it opened, get tanked and then watch the band. I can't remember who I was seeing, who I went with or why, but in January I found myself there as they opened. I was the second person in the place  The first? At the Bar was Lemmy. He was almost a permanent fixture at the bar at the time. I went over and say down next to him, ordered a pint of lager and asked if he wanted one. He nooded and took a double JD and Coke. This was pretty much the etiquette at Dingwalls, when in the presence of the great man. Usually he'd say cheers, have a sip and turn away, but he looked me up and down, saw my Ramones T-Shirt, bought at The Rainbow in 1977 and my badge that said "The Doomed" (which was what the Damned billed themselves as when they reformed in 1978 and played at The Moonlight club) and gave me an inquisitive look. 

He enquired "Were you at those gigs?", to which I replied "Yeah, I love the Ramones and The Damned". Lemmy nodded "Proper Rock and Roll". I then said "Yeah, if I hadn't seen the Ramones at The Roundhouse, I'd probably never have started my band". Lemmy looked me up and down and said "You've got a band, what sort of stuff do you do?". I said "Most of its our own stuff, a couple of covers, we do  a Heartbreakers song. Wild thing and Rockabilly guy by The Polecats as covers". He sort of nodded approvingly and said "Doing any gigs?". I laughed and said "We did one before Christmas, but my best mate, who was the lead singer never showed up. We'd been putting it together for two years and he let us down". Lemmy shook his head and said "Bastard". He then said "You know, if you wanna be a rock and roll band, you've got to live rock and roll. You can't work in an estate agent and wear a suit in the day, then dress up in a t shirt and jeans and become a band". I replied "Well he's a butcher, but we'd spend more or less every night practicing and writing songs". He then asked what we did about the no show. I said "Well we just did it without him, it was a bit chaotic, the drummers snare broke after three numbers, but the crowd seemed to like it. We made a load of cash and had a bit of a party after, which was great". Lemmy said "Yeah" and nodded approvingly. He then said "You know Rock and Roll isn't the captain of the football team and the best looking girl in the school, it's all the deadbeats, weirdos and misfits, who feel like outsiders, the hookers, the dealers and the drunks. If you give them a place to go, you'll get by in rock and roll". He then said "there's two types of music, there's the stuff where clever people show off to other clever people and then there's rock and roll, which beats your brains out and you leave with your head spinning. The people who love rock and roll want to be completely blown away by the band and any discussions after will simply be "That was F@@king great". Around this time a couple of Motorhead fans in well iron T-Shirts came up to have a chat. Lemmy gave them short shrift and said "I'm having a conversation" or words to the effect. At some point in the conversation, we discussed The Damned, who he did a few collaborations with around that time. He also mentioned that he'd saved Johnny Moped from getting his legs broken by the local Hells Angels chapter, but I only found out the full story when I watched the Johnny Moped documentary recently I'd assued it was some punk/biker thing. 

I was quite stunned. Here I was having a good old chit chat with a rock and roll legend. I asked him how he got the right people in the band, he simply said "it just happens, you do the right things and it happens". Around this point, I realised my mates had arrived and were gawping at me from afar. I bought Lemmy another JD and Coke. I figured that was the least I could do for the advice. A couple of people he knew then came over and started chatting and I joined my friends. A couple of other locals had also spied me and the word went around that I knew Lemmy. 

I never really gave it too much thought. If he'd been a Ramone, I'd probably have been too starstruck to speak. After that if I saw him I'd nod and he'd usually nod back, although I've no idea if he remembered chatting to me. It did change the way I thought about the band. I realised that you had to do the things to "make it happen" and you had to find your audience. The False Dots would never have and audience that came to see virtuoso musicians playing clever music. What we could do was make the night as much of a party as we could. All of the wrong turns and cock up's we made, were when we got members in the band who wanted to move away from this ethos. That is not to say we don't make great music, but we were not going to do things the normal way. We attracted a string of rather strange characters that we gave some sort of home to. We had the the local punk Poet DC who'd always turn up and read poetry at our shows. We had the local acid casualty Yogi, who'd turn up and try and sell his wares to the crowds and talk of the Grateful Dead. We had an arsonist, who I won't name, as he's a reformed character, who never said much but was always setting things on fire. We had a whole collection of waif's and strays who'd come back with us after gigs, for parties that sometimes lasted for days on end. I occasionally wondered if we'd have developed that side of the band anyway, without the Lemmy giving me an audience as our guru. But in a very few words, he solved, for me at least, what the conundrum of good rock and roll was. Anyone who knows me, knows the bands that I can't stand. Maybe, if they read this they'll have a better insight as to why. 

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If you'd told me then that The False Dots would still be going now, 45 years later, I'd have thought you mad, but here we are!

 Lemmy's advice must have done some good as we are celebrating our 45th Birthday gig on Sat 3rd Feb at The Dublin Castle. Come along! 

The full story of the band is on our website CLICK HERE

This is our new single. A celebration of the Sci Fi Girls of the 1970's, with a bit of a glam feel thrown in.